Derek Rielly: the slow, painful death of our newsagents

Derek Rielly

The once ubiquitous newsagents is now an endangered species in Australia. Photo: Phil Carrick

Last Saturday, the paper didn't bounce into my front yard. It's my signal to wake up, drain a coffee and bury my face into acres of broadsheet and fail the Good Weekend quiz for the 700th consecutive weekend.

By eight I'm wrapped in mismatched clothes and staggering down the street to my newsagency. But, wait. It's gone. The sign says "Closed."

There's no forwarding address. It was there a couple of months ago, but whatever. It had morphed into such an emporium of crap, of toy guns vacuumed packed in plastic and gifts you wouldn't dare give anyone whom you remotely cared for, that it wasn't a great loss. Inconvenient, sure, but no tears.

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Ok, there's another one up the hill. Old school. Where the owner sits at her desk reading a newspaper and peers over her spectacles at anyone who comes in and dares browse the titles. Curmudgeonly! I trudge up there and walk past it. I double back when I hit a sports bar. Wait. I double back. Closed. No sign. Empty store.

Sign of the times? Yeah, it is. The newsagency, in the form that we all know it, is dead. If you think you can stroll into a store that is brimful of newspapers and the latest magazines, and not much else, forget about it.

Ten years ago, there were nearly 5000 store front newsagencies in Australia, now it's a little under 4000. Print is evaporating before out eyes, lotteries are moving online and Officeworks is eating up stationery sales. There ain't a lot of sunshine.

What used to be the go-to-biz for anyone with a redundancy package or who was newly retired and who didn't want to stare at a TV in their harvest years, has become one of the great business challenges of our time.

Mark Fletcher, whose Australian Newsagency Blog delivers a surprisingly entertaining window into the minds of newsagency owners, agrees that the old-schoolers are dead.

"They don't know how to be retailers," he says, "and they're the one closing. They don't know how to be relevant in this marketplace. But then you've got smarter news agencies that are nimble, that are actually…growing."

By smarter, he means turning away from magazines and becoming a mini-department store, somewhere between a gift shop and a toy store. Fletcher says one of his own new agencies in Victoria has grown by around 17 per cent every year just by reacting to shifts in pop culture.

He sells Game of Thrones and Big Bang memorabilia, jigsaws, soft toys and $200 Charlie Bears alongside the usual staples of mags and greeting cards.

But, still, if you want to get out of the news agency game now, you'll sell for around one-and-half times your earnings instead of more than double that back in the glory days.

Buy or sell? Disappearing or changing?

"It's hard," says Fletcher, "but the truth is, if owners aren't excited or if they're not engaged, their failure is on them.

"Newsagencies used to be the business you'd retire to. Now they're the business people buy to work hard and turn the situation around. A good newsagent will attract you back."

And what will we lose if the newsagency were to disappear?

Carolyn Doherty, from the Australian Newsagency Federation, says we'd lose part of our community.

"We're here. If we end up with Coles and Woolworths and nothing else we'll lose the heartbeat of the community. We're the ones supporting local sports clubs, schools, answering tourist's questions, taking papers up to the old people's homes.

"It would be very sad to lose them. But they have to change. If they don't change they'll go out of business."

10 comments so far

Entertaining article as usual. I remember that when i use to work at a company who grew trees for the Japanese paper mills (about 7 years ago), one of my co-workers suggested the business might be in trouble given how the internet is growing (it did go into receivership mind you). But somehow i don't think people are ready to give away the "real books" just yet. After speaking to a lady from a book club recently, she likes the look and smell of her new books as much as the reading of them. I'm the same.

Commenter

Ryan

Date and time

July 24, 2014, 11:20AM

I gobble up the printed word as fast as I can reading books, news, and magazines more than I ever have as I head towards 50. But- not on paper. Everything I read is on a laptop or iPad mini (kindle app, google play app, zino app for my mags). Every where I go around the world I open up my iPad mini and there are all my books & mags. Occasionally I can't get an ebook for my uni course and have to buy a paper copy (always more expensive) and then I don't have it with me all the time (old and crude way of publishing). I am not a regular lotto guy but decided to have a flutter a few months back so registered and played on line. The times they are a changin (as always). Keep up, adapt, move forward.

Commenter

Peter

Date and time

July 24, 2014, 12:08PM

It depends on the book. I probably do most of my reading electronically to but some of my books i much prefer to have in the physical.

Commenter

Ryan

Date and time

July 24, 2014, 1:27PM

It's all a part of life, Derek. We must learn to adapt to the ever-changing times. "Video killed the radio star."

Commenter

Virgil

Date and time

July 24, 2014, 11:40AM

But the radio star isn't dead.

However download is killing the CD star.

Commenter

The Doktor

Location

Perth

Date and time

July 24, 2014, 12:03PM

@THE DOCToR yes the radio start is dead.....the voice, xfactor, plastic auto tune entertainers are being produced

Commenter

skeptic

Location

perth

Date and time

July 25, 2014, 6:38AM

I would willingly walk to my local newsagent, any day of the week, if there was a newspaper worth buying.

Commenter

Paul B

Location

Perth

Date and time

July 24, 2014, 1:23PM

Its the way its going. Someone mentioned to me about 10 years ago that it wont be long before papers don't exist. I can see that now, which is a shame. I think there could be room for a Sunday Paper at least. If they are making money through sales & advertising, then it wont be a problem.

I miss buying the old Daily News after work on the way home. Or getting my fix of the old Westside Football every Thursday and the Sunday Independent. We even used to get the Western Mail. You still cant beat the practicality of a newspaper on the dashboard whenever you want to have a read. You never have to re-charge the battery in your newspaper.

And how are we ever going to start our wood fired barbies with a laptop!!

Commenter

Munga

Location

WA

Date and time

July 24, 2014, 1:57PM

The change being experienced is sometimes called Disruptive Technology or Disruptive Innovation. that is just a fancy way of describing what we are living, like the industrial revolution in the past. The usual features of the change are a) mostly the older industry doesn't see it coming until its too late and b) the innovator is usually a small left of screen upstart.

Change is mostly good. The really terrifying realisation happens when you look at the rate of change. Its accelerating in front of our eyes. A well respected social commentator named Ray Kurtsweil calls this "the law of accelerating returns". The ride will get wilder and wilder over the next decade or two until we reach a point he calls the singularity. Technology moving faster than our ability to control or even understand. This ironically enough coincides with the time that artificial intelligence will exceed the combined brainpower of every living human on earth. Some short time after that we will be extinct or at least obsolete. As the kids say, LOL.

Commenter

Jaspar

Location

Murdoch

Date and time

July 24, 2014, 2:46PM

It's aqll fine and good that people are reading everything digitally these days, but i sit at a computer desk for a living and i'd rather not ruin my eyesight any more than i have to !!

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